Why Jim Jordan's attacks on Alvin Bragg are falling painfully flat: journalist

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) has been railing tirelessly against Democratic Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, Jr.'s 34-count criminal case against former President Donald Trump. Bragg, Jordan insists, is a ruthless partisan who is going after Trump for political reasons — not because of the rule of law.

But journalist John Nichols, in an article published by The Nation on April 19, argues that Jordan's anti-Bragg line of attack is falling painfully flat.

"On Monday, (April 17) House Judiciary Committee chair Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) swept into New York City to conduct a hearing that attacked District Attorney Bragg, whose office has secured indictments against Jordan's political ally, former President Donald Trump, on 34 counts of falsifying business records in the first degree," Nichols explains. "During the course of a bombastic hearing that peddled the line that Manhattan's first Black district attorney was soft on crime and overly tough on Trump, Jordan claimed that the DA's office had 'lost its way when it comes to fighting crime and upholding the law.'"

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Jordan, Nichols notes, didn't get a warm reception in New York City from either Mayor Eric Adams or a group of anti-Jordan protesters. Adams, a former New York Police Department (NYPD) officer, called out Jordan for his political theatrics.

"Crowds of New Yorkers gathered outside the session to protest against Jordan's stunt, with many of them demanding that the chairman 'let the public in' to the hearing that featured testimony from a handful of New Yorkers but failed to invite the mayor or other local officials," Nichols observes. "Bragg pushed back just as loudly. The DA sued Jordan for interfering with the effort to prosecute Trump by launching 'an unprecedentedly brazen and unconstitutional attack' on the prosecutor's office."

Nichols compares Bragg to a famous New York City DA of the 1930s: Republican Thomas Dewey, who later became governor of New York State and received the GOP presidential nomination in 1948 but lost to incumbent Democratic President Harry Truman by 4 percent. Dewey's running mate was Earl Warren, who became chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court under President Dwight D. Eisenhower.

As Manhattan DA, Dewey famously took on Tammany Hall, New York City's long-running Democratic machine — which lasted from 1789 until the 1960s. Director Martin Scorsese depicted the Tammany Hall Democrats and 19th Century Tammany leader William B. Tweed, a.k.a. Boss Tweed, in his 2002 movie "Gangs of New York" (about political turmoil in NYC during the U.S. Civil War). But the Tammany Hall machine existed long before the Boss Tweed era and continued long after that.

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"When Thomas Dewey, arguably the most nationally prominent Manhattan district attorney before Alvin Bragg, was running for the post in 1937, he made it clear that he was prepared to go after political wrongdoers," Nichols recalls. "A young special prosecutor who had made a name for himself taking on gangsters, Dewey announced his candidacy on the Republican Party line because, he said, he believed it was necessary to go after Tammany Hall, the Democratic political machine that once dominated the politics of New York City…. Jordan imagines that he is doing damage to Bragg by 'exposing' the DA as a politicized prosecutor, just as the Tammany Hall hacks of the 1930s thought they were exposing and damaging Dewey."